Friday, September 7, 2012

I got an advance of Tempest and here are my immediate
thoughts after one listen

There’s no doubt it is modern Bob Dylan. The music hearkens
back to some indeterminate point in American history. Part blues, part folk,
part jazz, part some hybrid feeding trough of all roots music filtered through
the sensibilities of someone who was there for all of it, every moment of the
last 50 years Bob both reveled in and created. He has never been a nostalgia
act, he has been his own act; making his own music that encompasses everything
that came before and predicts all that is to come. Tempest will not
divide fans. I believe if you are a believer in Dylan, all of it - the old, the
middle the new - you are going to FLIP FUCKING OUT over this album. It has
everything you want and a level of lyrical density that has been gone for a
long time. If, on the other hand, you find the modern Dylan to be an
impenetrable frog’s croak compared to Blonde
On Blonde look elsewhere. You will
find this to be the same. It is worth noting that his voice is actually less
rough than it has been in recent years, and the musical accompaniment (his
touring band with the addition of Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo) is as lightly sweet
as Love & Theft but it does not sound like a man in his
20’s.

That aside, I am swooning after only one listen. Dylan’s
lyrics are as intense as evocative as they have ever been. They are poetic,
historic, intelligent and informative. It is Bob at his best. The album is
beautifully produced by Dylan himself and shows a man so comfortable with his
own musical skin that “fashion” isn’t even a consideration.I can’t wait to listen to this album
obsessively for the next few months to unlock all its mysteries, but here a few
immediate impressions.

1) “Duquesne Whistle” - upbeat tune. Impossible to think of
it now except in terms of the amazing, weird video that accompanies it - watch
it HERE. Nostalgia and dread mix nicely to form something like…Dylan’s version
of normal. Would have fit nicely on Love & Theft. A very pleasing musical
arrangement hides a viper’s eye.

3) “Narrow Way” - repetitive, guitar driven tale of weary
resignation and retribution with the ominous chorus. “If I can’t work up to
you, you’ll surely have to work down to me someday.”

4) “Long and Wasted Time” - an embittered cry for lost love,
and lost everything else. So many great couplets: “I wear dark glasses to cover
my eyes, there’s secrets in ‘em I can’t disguise.” An amazing vocal
performance.

5) “Pay In Blood” - “I pay in Blood, But not my own.”
Wouldn’t have been out of place on Infidels musically. But a deep set of
ominous lyrics.

6) “Scarlet Town” - Lyrically, this one is so deep, I can’t
even begin until I’ve heard it more. Clearly he is under the influence of
another poet here. A vision of the natural world gone mad under the influence
of a corrupting mankind? I don’t know - this is one heavy song.

7) “Early Roman Kings” - a groovy, stone blues. One of his
best modern lyrics. There is so much going on here, I can’t begin to pick my
favorite of the amazing lines that crash the modern condition head on with the
ancients.

8) “Tin Angel” - A tale of corruption and betrayal. John
Ford meets John Dos Passos.

9) “Tempest” - it sounds like a Stephen Foster epic, but it
is pure Bob Dylan. History unravels and spills over the floor like so much
unspooled film as Leonardo Dicaprio rubs elbows with the real participants in
this tragedy that seems to never lose its appeal. Yes, Bob examines the sinking
of The Titanic in 14 minutes of hypnotic storytelling. Getting lost in the
dream-like lyrics and lovely musicianship it might be easy to miss the fact
that Dylan’s voice is more compelling on this song than it has been in years.
As fascinating as the actual story and twice as revelatory. James Cameron eat
your heart out. Dylan tells the story with such comparative brevity and
absolute poetic superiority, it seems like HE should get the Oscar.

10) “Roll On John” - A tribute to John Lennon. Bob is openly
broken-hearted about the senseless loss of one of the few people on earth who
could have really understood what it was like to be Bob Dylan.